The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Game of the Month

If you haven’t heard how amazing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is by now, 1. you clearlyhaven’tbeenonTSGenough, and 2. you’re probably one of our non-gaming readers. Even then, it’s baffling that any mention of the award-winning game has escaped you for over a month now.

Breath of the Wild turned gamers’ perception of what a Zelda game could be with its massive open-world that allowed you to play through the game’s dungeons in any order you wanted or allowed you to head straight to the final fight from the outset. It launched simultaneously on the Wii U and the new Nintendo Switch on March 3., just a couple days after February’s Game of the Month, Horizon Zero Dawn, and all but overshadowed it. BotW almost dethroned Ocarina of Time, another Zelda game, as the highest rated game of all time on Metacritic until one reviewer sunk its aggregated score to a still mind-blowing 97.

For a single-player game, Breath of the Wild became one of the most social games ever created. Social media and internet forums were set ablaze with posts about the game. It also harkened back to the good ole days where kids talked to each other about what they found in the games they were playing the night before. Players wore their playtime like a badge of honor, many players landing between the 100-200 hour range. Did you know you could do this? Have you found this item yet? Questions like these became standard during lunchtime chatter.

Most notably, this game gave the Wii U a proper send-off and is the sole reason why the Nintendo Switch is off to a running start. Had Breath of the Wild not been released alongside the launch of the Switch, perhaps the console would still be struggling to catch steam. However, for many users, they are proud to tote their Switch around as a Zelda-machine.

For all these reasons and so many more, we’re awarding our Game of the Month to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

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Marcus created Top Shelf Gaming to celebrate the awesome things about the video game industry while challenging the areas of the video game community that could be improved. He loves playing guitar and eating tacos, but never at the same time.